Mike Cardillo: Conference realignment an example of NCAA hypocrisy

Published 1:00 am, Sunday, November 25, 2012

Rutgers Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Tim Pernetti, left, and Rutgers President Robert Barchi listen Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012, in Piscataway, N.J., as Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, right, announces that Rutgers will join the Big Ten. Rutgers is joining the Big Ten, leaving the Big East behind and cashing in on the school's investment in a football program that only 10 years ago seemed incapable of competing at the highest level. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Photo: Mel Evans, Associated Press

It's been over 15 years since "Seinfeld" filmed its series finale, an episode which is almost universally reviled by fans of the seminal 1990s sitcom. Let's agree that how one goes about putting a bow on a "show about nothing" is a question for another day.

Instead, let's quickly remember the finale's main plot point: Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer are put on trial in a small Massachusetts town for violating its innocent bystander law.

With that in mind, it's a shame the America sporting scene doesn't have its own version of the innocent bystander law since we're all guilty in allowing the NCAA grow into what it has become: a corrupt, see-no-evil, ivory tower-cabal which makes untold billions off the backs of unpaid "student athletes."

It just might be the best racket currently going.

Chew on these numbers: ESPN will pay something in the range of $7 billion over 12 years to air the BCS bowl package and eventual playoff starting in 2014. Not too shabby, considering the "student athletes" who put their bodies on the line to play these games won't see a dime of that money.

That's but one example in the countless, consistent hypocrisy exhibited by the NCAA.

The state of New Jersey -- trying to fight back against a budget deficit -- decided to allow legalized sports gambling within its borders. Not so fast says the NCAA, which already moved the 2013 women's basketball regional from Trenton, N.J., to Bridgeport in a typically punitive act.

But, yeah, the 14-year, $10.8 billion deal that has CBS airing the NCAA basketball tournament in March has nothing -- nothing -- at all to do with people filling out their brackets every year. Without a low-stakes gambling output, people would surely make time to tune in at 12:30 p.m. on a Thursday to watch Creighton play Auburn for the purity of amateur athletics.

That's the NCAA logic, anyway.

It likes to act all high-and-mighty, like it's some beacon of 1950s Post-War American idealism, yet it doesn't matter when its member institutions move (again, for bucket-loads of cable television cash) to different conferences, throwing history and tradition in the garbage.

Almost all of my personal outrage stems from what's happened to the Big East and what it means for my alma mater, UConn, which now needs to beg on its hands and knees to hopefully be admitted into the ACC after Maryland bolted to greener Midwestern pastures.

Lest we forget, the conference dominoes all began to fall because -- yep, you guessed it -- television. Members of the Big 12 freaked out when Texas teamed up with ESPN to create the Longhorn Network. Texas A&M and Missouri jumped ship to the SEC, setting in motion a series of seismic shifts.

When you ask somebody what makes college football great, despite the fact computers and polls end up determining its champion, mostly they'd answer "tradition." Tradition, naturally, means nothing compared to a little extra television money in the coffers. (There's nothing more traditional than a would-be yearly Big East football game between San Diego State and Central Florida, right?)

Instead, it means the Big Ten (now with 14 members) decided to add Rutgers under the foolish notion that people in New York would then demand their cable providers to add the Big Ten Network in order to watch the Scarlet Knights play Indiana in football. Sure, right. What's that line about selling you a bridge?

Problem here is, there's almost no way to stop the NCAA and its member institutions' unchecked greed.

In an ideal world, enough people would be disgusted by the hypocrisy and find something else to watch on their televisions on Saturday afternoons in the fall or a Tuesday night in January. Less eyeballs means less advertising revenue for ESPN et al, and less money to the universities.

That's not going to happen.

We're all tacitly compliant in this scam.

In a way, it's like the much-in-the-news Twinkie. Everybody knows the sugary, spongy Hostess confection is bad for your body, but sometimes you just crave one.